What Tax Prep Software Looked Like in 1991

For most of us, "doing our taxes" means using some kind of tax preparation software -- whether it's using a website, a desktop app, or having a professional run some fancy system for you, it is rare these days to do your taxes entirely on paper from start to finish. But in 1991, things were different: a thriving market of competing tax prep packages were on the market (at about 1:50 in the video below, the host plops nine different boxed tax prep packages on a desk), and they marked the beginning of a massive shift from filling out forms manually to filling them out digitally. Although IRS e-file existed then, it wasn't widely used -- and you still had to mail in a signed form anyway.

In this episode of Computer Chronicles, we see what tax prep software looked like in 1991. It wasn't pretty. For the most part, the competing software makers took the IRS forms and put them onscreen, adding help text and ways to search for the forms. While this was arguably an improvement (since the computer could at least do the arithmetic for you), it was a far cry from today's "Let me ask you some questions about your finances, then fill in all the details for you" model seen in modern versions of TurboTax and similar apps. So while you procrastinate and avoid doing this year's taxes, take a peek at what things were like more than twenty years ago:

It's also interesting to note the cost of these software packages in 1991. They ranged from $70-100, whereas today's (much more sophisticated) apps start at around $30.

In the future, eating and drinking near your computer keyboard might not be such a dangerous game. On March 8, Apple filed a patent application for a keyboard designed to prevent liquids, crumbs, dust, and other “contaminants” from getting inside, Dezeen reports.

Apple has previously filed several patents—including one announced on March 15—surrounding the idea of a keyless keyboard that would work more like a trackpad or a touchscreen, using force-sensitive technology instead of mechanical keys. The new anti-crumb keyboard patent that Apple filed, however, doesn't get into the specifics of how the anti-contamination keyboard would work. It isn’t a patent for a specific product the company is going to debut anytime soon, necessarily, but a patent for a future product the company hopes to develop. So it’s hard to say how this extra-clean keyboard might work—possibly because Apple hasn’t fully figured that out yet. It’s just trying to lay down the legal groundwork for it.

Here’s how the patent describes the techniques the company might use in an anti-contaminant keyboard:

"These mechanisms may include membranes or gaskets that block contaminant ingress, structures such as brushes, wipers, or flaps that block gaps around key caps; funnels, skirts, bands, or other guard structures coupled to key caps that block contaminant ingress into and/or direct containments away from areas under the key caps; bellows that blast contaminants with forced gas out from around the key caps, into cavities in a substrate of the keyboard, and so on; and/or various active or passive mechanisms that drive containments away from the keyboard and/or prevent and/or alleviate containment ingress into and/or through the keyboard."

Thanks to a change in copyright law in 2011, the U.S. now gives ownership of an idea to the person who first files for a patent, not the person with the first working prototype. Apple is especially dogged about applying for patents, filing plenty of patents each year that never amount to much.

Still, they do reveal what the company is focusing on, like foldable phones (the subject of multiple patents in recent years) and even pizza boxes for its corporate cafeteria. Filing a lot of patents allows companies like Apple to claim the rights to intellectual property for technology the company is working on, even when there's no specific invention yet.

As The New York Timesexplained in 2012, “patent applications often try to encompass every potential aspect of a new technology,” rather than a specific approach. (This allows brands to sue competitors if they come out with something similar, as Apple has done with Samsung, HTC, and other companies over designs the company views as ripping off iPhone technology.)

That means it could be a while before we see a coffee-proof keyboard from Apple, if the company comes out with one at all. But we can dream.

In the modern world, data breaches happen with startling regularity. They can happen to giant credit monitoring firms, social networks, or the fast food restaurant down the street. In late 2017, a security research firm found 1.4 billion stolen usernames and passwords floating around unencrypted on the Dark Web, giving even the most unsophisticated hackers a shot at your online accounts. In many cases, you may not realize that your account has been compromised.

As CNET reports, a security tool called Pwned Passwords can help you figure out with a simple search which of your passwords has already been leaked. Created by a regional director at Microsoft named Troy Hunt in August 2017, the free site is designed to make it as easy as possible to check the security of your online accounts. It's as simple as entering your password into the search bar. In February 2018, Hunt updated his original site to include passwords from more major breaches. The database now features half a billion passwords that have been leaked as part of hacks on sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, DropBox, and Gawker. Some are sourced from breaches you may not have even heard of, but which still contained your information.

"Data breaches are rampant and many people don't appreciate the scale or frequency with which they occur," Hunt writes on the site. When he analyzes the user credentials leaked after big hacks like the one on Adobe in 2013, he finds that he will keep seeing "same accounts exposed over and over again, often with the same passwords." And once that password is leaked once, that puts all the other accounts that you use that password for at risk, too.

Pwned Password

So if you're one of those people who uses the same password for multiple accounts—we know, it's hard to remember a different password for every website you ever visit—now would be a good time to see whether that password has ever been part of a data breach. Pwned Password will tell you if your password has been revealed as part of any major data breaches, and which ones. (CNET advises against searching your current passwords, since revealing that info to third parties is never a good idea, but checking old passwords you no longer use is OK.)

I, for one, searched a standard password I've been using for a steady rotation of online accounts since high school, and found out it has been spotted 135 different times as part of data breaches. Oh boy. (Presumably, those might not all be related to my accounts, instead coming from other people out there in the world who base their passwords off tidbits from The Fairly OddParents, but who knows.)

If, like mine, your passwords show up on Pwned Passwords, you should update them as soon as possible. (Here are some good tips on coming up with secure ones. Maybe don't use "password.") This would also be a good time to get yourself a password manager, like LastPass or 1Password.

The latter service actually has a Pwned Password integration so that you can check each of the passwords stored in your 1Password with Pwned Password. If you use LastPass, the service's security checkup can also search for potential data breaches in your roster, but it looks for leaked usernames, not passwords.